Personality and
Social
Psychology
By: Sky, Rachel, Isaac,
Kayla, Chase, Gabby,
Malia, and Mark
Personality Structure
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Freud’s view of human personality—including
its emotions and striving—arises from a conflict
between our aggressive, pleasure-seeking
biological impulses and the internalized social
restraints against them.
3 interacting systems:
Id
Ego
superego
ID, Ego, and Super-ego
 ID
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Unconscious
Satisfies basic needs: survival, reproduction, and
aggression
 EGO
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Conscious mind
Thoughts, judgments, perceptions
Gratifies the ID’s impulses in realistic ways
 Super-ego
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Preconscious (outside awareness but accessible)
Strives for perfection, judging actions, and producing
positive feelings of pride, or negative feelings of guilt
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Oral (0-18 months)
 Pleasure centers on the mouth- sucking, biting,
chewing
Anal (18-36 months)
 Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder
elimination, coping with demands for control
Phallic (3-6 years)
 Pleasure zone is the genitals coping with
incestuous sexual feelings
Latency (6 to puberty)
 Dormant sexual feelings
Genital (puberty on)
 Maturation of sexual interests
The Big Five Personality Factors
 Conscientiousness
 Agreeableness
 Neuroticism
 Openness
 Extraversion
Personality
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Biological influences
Genetically determined temperament
Autonomic nervous system reactivity
Brain activity
Psychological Influences
Learned Responses
Unconscious thought processes
Optimistic or pessimistic attributional style
Social-Cultural influences
Childhood experiences
Influence of the situation
Cultural expectations
Social support
Personality Defense
Mechanisms
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Ego protects itself with defense mechanisms
Repression-banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts and
feelings from consciousness
Regression-allows us to retreat to an earlier, more
infantile stage of development
Reaction formation-when the ego unconsciously
makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposite
Projection-disguises threatening impulses by
attributing them to others
Rationalization-occurs when we unconsciously
generate self-justifying explanations to hide from
ourselves the real reasons for our action
Displacement-diverts sexual or aggressive impulses
toward an object or person that is psychologically
more acceptable than the one that aroused the
feeling.
Social Thinking
 Fundamental
Attribution Theory – the
tendency to overestimate the influence of
personality and underestimate the
influence of situations.
 Foot-in-the-door Phenomenon – the
tendency for those who complied to a
small request to comply later to a larger
demand.
 Cognitive Dissonance Theory – theory that
we act to reduce the discomfort we feel
when two thoughts are inconsistent.
Social Influence
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Conformity – adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to
coincide with a group standard.
Normative social influence – influence resulting from
a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid
disapproval.
Informational social influence – influence resulting
from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions
about reality.
Social Facilitation – stronger responses on simple or
well-learned tasks in the presence of others.
Social Loafing – tendency for people in a group to
exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward a
common goal.
Groupthink can be prevented when a leader
welcomes various opinions and invites experts’
critiques of developing plans or assigns people to
identify possible problems.
Antisocial Relations
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Prejudice – an unjustifiable attitude toward a
group and its members.
Discrimination – unjustifiable behavior towards a
group or its members.
Ingroup Bias – “Us.” The tendency to favor our own
group.
Outgroup– “Them”
Scapegoat Theory – theory that prejudice offers
an outlet for anger by providing someone to
blame.
Frustration-Aggression Principle – principle that
frustration creates anger, which can generate
aggression.
Social Trap – a situation in which the conflicting
parties become caught in mutually destructive
behavior.
Prosocial Relations
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Passionate Love – intense positive absorption in
another, at the beginning of a relationship
Companionate Love – deep affectionate
attachment we feel for those whose lives
intertwine with ours
Self-disclosure – revealing intimate aspects of
oneself to others
Altruism – unselfish regard for the welfare of others
Mere exposure effect – phenomenon that
repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking
of them.
Similarity – opposites attract is a myth. We often
tend to like someone similar to us. Similarity breeds
content.
Our Song
Lyrics
“Moves Like Jagger”
There’s a man who’s names
Freud
He’s doctor who had lots of
toys
There’s a structure that’s
totally his
It starts with the Id
Beginning with this
And it goes like this
The id seeks total gratification
The ego gratifies Id impulses
And the superego
It’s the superego
It makes yooooooooou have
good judgment
But of course that’s not all
There are stages
The lists not so tall
It’s a short one
It starts with the mouth and
then travels south
I’ve got this figured out
And it goes like this
First it starts out with only just
one tooth
Then I learn how to use that
bathroom
And I begin to wonder
What’s the thing down under?
Now you’re fiiiiiiiiiinding sexual
interests